4.8 The defaultAppsDirvirtual

When using ensemble.createShell to start processes, defaultAppsDir specifies the default directory (full path) on the remote host in which the executable is expected to be found.

The default value returned from defaultAppsDir is

/usr/local/lib/beta/distribution/aps/$/

but this value may be changed in two ways:

1. Setting the BETALIB environment variable. If BETALIB is found in the environment of the shell process, the value returned from defaultAppsDir is $(BETALIB)/distribution/aps/$/.
2. By further binding defaultAppsDir and setting dir to whatever full path is convenient:

shellEnv (# ... defaultAppsDir::< (# do '/myhome/myapps/$/' -> dir[]; #) #)

Alternatively the directory may be changed individually on each createShell call by further binding the ensemble.createShell.appsDir virtual.

Similar to specifying INCLUDE and BODY paths in the BETA fragment system, you may use $ to specify machine dependent executable paths. That is, assume dir is assigned the value /mydir/$/, and the remote host on which the new shell is to be created is of type sun4s. Then, the execName parameter to createShell is appended to dir, and all occurrences of $ in the resulting string is replaced by sun4s before using the resulting text string as the full path of an executable.